I’d totally let her skip. I’m planning on letting my s28 miss first day of sophomore year to move d25 in if the dates over lap.
The last day of school is a formality and if she’s okay with missing, that would be an easy choice for me.
FYI: FIRST day of school was being pondered.
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Hey more experienced parents! We’re doing a family trip to DC next week and I’m toying with driving D25 down to William & Mary and/or U Richmond as part of this trip. As a potential psych major, does not want an activist or party school, still deciding on college size although >2k better, wants enclosed campus and not super urban (no NYU, BU, etc), “average excellent” kid would you send her to either to visit? But maybe we should find some safeties first before playing with this? I’m still on the fence about doing this at all, but we are unlikely to be in the DC/VA area in the near future and figure we could take a day to play in Williamsburg if that felt like a good use of time. Thoughts?
What about DC schools, you ask? My sense is that they are going to feel too urban. I’ve only visited Georgetown and I suspect it will be a no-go for her taste. If we happen to end up in the neighborhood in our jaunts, we’ll walk through, but I’m not going to make an effort to get there.
If she really wants to go and she doesn’t mind missing the first day of school, I say go for it.
I’ve let my kids skip for far less honestly.
And if anything productive happens in the first day of school, I’d be surprised. It certainly doesn’t happen here.
I think those are probably worth a visit if you are in the area. I would also visit JHU. Not a safety, but I think it meets the parameters.
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Definitely go visit, especially bc you’re not going to be back in the area. It’s good to just visit schools to get a sense of what they want/don’t want. You never know until you’re on the campus. I wish we’d started earlier when we visited places as a family.
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I say go visit at least one of them. It will either confirm her campus type choice or change her mind. If she likes the feel of the campus you’ll know to add more like it or completely take that type off. I’m not a huge fan of visiting colleges during the summer because you won’t get a feel for the students that go there but this would at least help decide what types of campus she’d like.
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Unfortunately it can’t always be avoided - it’s hard to travel during the school year end even harder to find a weekend tour.
You are right about the campus though. At this early stage it’s not about find THE school, but THE TYPE of school, which will also help find safeties that she actually likes. Nailing down what you don’t want can be very helpful.
Boston is a great place for this. In one place you can visit so many different types and sizes of campuses. In (a long) two days we were able to hit MIT, Harvard, BU, BC and Tufts and walk away with some good understanding of preference.
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Here is our college counselor’s suggestions for a DC trip:
American University
George Mason University (Fairfax)
Howard University
University of Maryland – College Park
Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore)
Loyola University Maryland
Goucher College
United States Naval Academy
The Catholic University of America
Georgetown University
George Washington University
St. John’s College (Annapolis)
University of Mary Washington (Fredericksburg)
Regarding a balanced list: she has to figure out what are the compromises she is willing to make, so it’s worth exploring various types of schools at this point. For my D it was geographic location - we looked for schools that were overall similar to the ones high on the list but in states where fewer people from our area might apply, for others it might be size or setting.
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Thanks for this! I cannot make this into a college trip entirely–it’s likely the only vacation our family will have this summer due to kids’ ECs, and doing so would absolutely stress out D25. But if it’s tying something to an already happening activity, or adding 1-2 schools, no biggie.
D25’s wants are pretty loose and vague at this point, so I think seeing sizes of campuses may help. (Maybe? I can see her saying “Mom, this isn’t going to make or break my college experience.” And she’s right. If we had all the time/$ in the world I wouldn’t tour in the summer, either, but we’ve got what we’ve got and we’re already on the other coast from us, so…it’s worth some effort.)
I think everyone will enjoy seeing W&M if you haven’t ever been. Also take a bit of time to check out historical Williamsburg, we had so much fun when we visited - the kids were little and S24 was very disappointed to find out that storming the Governor’s mansion didn’t include torches and pitchforks (I think he’d watched Beauty and the Beast a few times too often).
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This!!
And that’s why I’d suggest visiting a range—yes, the normal suspects like Johns Hopkins and American and Georgetown and the University of Maryland College Park and so on, but it might actually be better to visit the sorts of places that don’t get much love on CC, like St Mary’s College of Maryland and the University of Maryland Baltimore County and George Mason and Bowie State and Goucher and Towson and so on.
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Agree that figuring out the types is the most important. I thought D would like Fordham, and she thought it would be fine. After that visit, she is a hard no on any school with a religious affiliation (other than purely historical). I also thought she would hate the women’s colleges, and she did too. But after visiting, Smith shot up near the top of her list, where it will probably stay. Neither of those outcomes were expected, but both were very helpful in crafting future lists.
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Not urban, real campus, >2K - how about UVA?
I’m open–isn’t OOS a little rough for UVA? My geography in VA is, ahem, not great, so let me go look at distances. I’ve now rented a car for 2 days, so can play a bit with options.
No tougher than several other schools mentioned here. Again, the exercise isn’t to make a definite list. I agree worth a visit if it works.
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URichmond and Wm&Mary easily doable/driveable in one day; can also do UVA and W&L in Lexington in one day… just pick earliest and latest tours. The drive is easy as it’s right off the main interstate. I’ve done that twice now with D18 and S23. Definitely do Georgetown in DC, the area around there is really fun and walkable. (ps- If it’s still open I highly recommend a little Coffee/Cupcake shop near Gtown called Baked and Wired!)
My D18 (now college graduate22) loved VA schools and applied to UVA, Wm&Mary and URichmond and got into all, so if you have a high stats, well-rounded student don’t be scared of applying if they love it… tbh URichmond was her absolute favorite of the three! She ended up following finaid award and going to Vandy, but still wonders what life would have looked like if she had gone to URichmond. All three of my kiddos just loved everything about UR and Richmond. I jokingly call it the Goldlocks school - not to big, not too small, strong academics without being cut-throat competitive, brand new health and wellness center (basically a spa for students - off the charts!), vibrant big city life but quiet secluded campus, great history and traditions (it actually use to be separate mens and womens schools!) Good luck!
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Schedules came out last night, and it’s a train wreck. We are going in this morning to try to fix it. Frequently this happens, and historically I have had good luck getting their schedules fixed. But this one is particularly bad, I think we are going to need to move a lot of pieces to hopefully fix it.
I do have a good relationship with the principal who will be helping us fix it, and have known him since D21 played U9 through maybe U15 soccer together. He used to be a teacher at the HS, and he taught and liked S18 and S19. And they always are a bit more flexible with the kids who do well academically too. I’ll need to cash in on all that good will today I think.
Psyching myself up for this. Wish me luck.
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